


Of Dreams and Desperations

by magistrate



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Action, Angst, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-08
Updated: 2011-09-08
Packaged: 2017-10-23 13:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magistrate/pseuds/magistrate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: #116. Sam, Sha're. Getting to know you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Dreams and Desperations

**Author's Note:**

> Wildly AU at Forever In A Day. I'm pretty sure it fit the prompt when I started writing it.

The first thing Sam felt was fire. Fire and pull, screaming along her nerves, flaring between her eyes and snaking into her mind in a way even Jolinar hadn't managed because Jolinar had been physical (flesh and blood and pressure and bone) and this was anything but. This was tearing through her mind and leaving charred angry gashes as it went.

The second thing she felt was a cool cloth on her face and a hand brushing back her hair.

That was strange. Not that there was no transition but that there was nothing to transition between – the pain was still there, but it had been brushed under this new sensory data with the same perfunctory effort at camouflage as someone sweeping a broken vase under a rug.

She tried to grab the hand.

It caught her instead, laying her hand back by her side. She was lying down, on a rug or a carpet that smelled like sand and sunbaked herbs. "Shh," said someone above her. "Rest, woman."

 _Woman?_

Even with the kindness in the voice, even though it was a woman's voice speaking, that was enough to make Sam push away the cloth and the hand that reached for it.

Light flooded her eyes the instant she did, blazing molten-gold before it settled back to sun filtered through sheets of hanging cloth. The woman kneeling beside her rocked back onto her heels, concern written into recognizable brown eyes and hanging on the angles of her face.

Sam had just been aiming a zat at that face.

" _Amonet._ "

–but that wasn't right. The woman before her was dressed simply, with a gentle expression, and she'd been bathing Sam's brow. Not a very Goa'uld-like thing to do.

"Sha're?" Sam said. She ignored the fact that it didn't make sense; at the moment, it made the most sense of anything in the world around her. She turned to look around, and took in rugs and redbrown tent walls and talismans hung from the wooden supports. "Abydos?" she asked. And why were they on _Abydos_? The last thing she remembered–

"No," Sha're said, and her voice was sad. She reached forward again, brushing hair away from Sam's eyes. Her eyes were sad, too. "I cannot save you."

"I don't need saving," Sam said. Her head still hurt, waves of muffled pain cresting and breaking. She groaned. "Do I?"

Sha're lowered her eyes. "Be strong, yet," she said. "I am sorry. I will be with you. I will be with you when you die."

-

Sam woke in a cell.

She woke with metal against her cheek and gold glinting from every wall – it was a Goa'uld cell, and her heart lurched. For a second she thought she was back on Apophis' ship, coming to and not blind this time, but there was no one there with her–

But she caught herself. That had been over a year ago, and those ships were nothing more than space debris in Earth's neighborhood. Apophis might be nowhere near this place.

This was _Amonet's_ ha'tak, and Sam was beginning to suspect that their mission to rescue the captured Abydonians had not gone particularly well.

She eased herself up, and regretted it. Her arms gave out, crashing her down against the wall, and that was enough to get her stomach to eject everything it had. Then she barely managed to get her breathing down so she didn't aspirate her own vomit.

Not an auspicious start to her escape.

She lay down, counted to ten, and pushed herself across the floor with the heels of her palms. Handlength by handlength, keeping her breathing low until the smell of vomit wasn't so aggressive in her nostrils. Count to ten, twenty, and slowly ease herself up again.

God, her head hurt.

She closed her eyes and kept them closed until she'd gained a sitting position, and the nausea and pain began to die back. When she opened her eyes she could take stock of the her surroundings.

The first thing she noticed was that it might not have been a cell. A small storage room, maybe, but there was a panel on the inside, by the door. Probably locked, unless the Jaffa on board this ship were even more incompetent at security than they were at field tactics.

The Goa'uld's need for cells had always confused her. They never seemed to hold intelligence gathering and interrogation a high priority, and in Goa'uld-vs.-Goa'uld warfare, most of the potential captives would be Jaffa, who meant little to the Goa'uld. They shouldn't have that many potential captives. It would make sense, she thought, if only the strongholds and select few ships turned out to have dedicated holding cells, on the off chance that one day, a rival System Lord would fall into another Goa'uld's grasp. It would also explain why she seemed to be locked in a closet.

Not that that helped her at all.

She took a closer look at the place: no visible air vents, no visible surveillance, all four walls covered in Goa'uld heiroglyphics nagging in their familiarity.

There was something strange about one of the walls.

She couldn't place it, but her eyes kept returning to a certain set of symbols. They didn't differ from the rest of the walls in size, pattern, or orientation, but there was _something_. She steadied herself and crawled toward them, and the door flew open.

"She is awake."

She turned to see two Jaffa, one of them stepping in, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "Tau'ri woman," he spat. "Did you think you could assassinate our Goddess, Queen to Lord Apophis? Has the _shol'va_ poisoned your mind with his lies?"

They might have been questions in form, but Sam doubted he wanted her to answer. And as she had no interest in pulling out Colonel O'Neill's bag of tricks and inciting them to annoyance or anger, and as – she could admit it – she had too much pride to bluster, negotiate or beg, she set her jaw, shrugged, and said "So, what now?"

"Amonet will see you," the Jaffa said, reached down, and grabbed her arm to haul her to her feet. The other one came in and took her other arm, and they dragged her into the hallway before her feet had even found the floor.

 _Well,_ she thought. _At least maybe I'll get some answers._

-

Amonet rose from her throne when her Jaffa dragged Sam in, and it only took a glance to confirm that she had not been the one bathing Sam's brow.

"I am Amonet," she said.

"Major Samantha Carter. United States Air Force. Pleased to meet you." Sam grimaced; she could almost hear the two-beat pause before Colonel O'Neill, if he'd said it, would have finished _Actually, no, I'm not._ Sam, for her part, just kept her expression civil and tried not to think about the absurdity of being diplomatic with a Goa'uld.

"The child has been hidden away," Amonet said. "Safe from you and the enemies of Apophis. Your mission has failed."

Sam could hear her heart playing backup to the doubts swirling in the back of her head. She'd no idea how the mission had turned out. She didn't even know if she was the only one here.

 _So get her to tell you._ "Hey, we got the Abydonians, didn't we?"

There was a flash of anger across Amonet's face, and Sam tried not to look pleased. _So they did get out. All I have to do is hold on for rescue._

Except she had no idea how they'd be able to find her.

Except cracking open a ha'tak to extract one captured Major might have been too tall an order even for the SGC.

Except the Armed Forces didn't do well on sentimentality. Not even on this mission. According to the top brass, Abydos was interesting for exactly two reasons: one, its status as a former territory of Ra might mean that remnants of his technology might be there, waiting to be discovered; and two, despite the depletion of the Nagada mine, other sources of naqahdah might exist on the planet. The Colonel's and Daniel's personal connections to the people there weren't even a blip on the radar, and only an impressive display of bureaucratic tapdancing on the Colonel's part had allowed the rescue mission to take place at all. That meant that unless they really had found something spectacular about the reason Amonet had rounded up so many former slaves, the chance of a rescue mission to correct for screwing up their _last_ rescue mission was dependent less on policy and more on the Colonel's further tapdancing skills.

 _So, file that under possible but by no means guaranteed_ , Sam thought. _And come up with another plan._ The SGC didn't leave people behind, but she hadn't been left behind, she'd been snatched and taken away. She was on her own.

"You are a thorn in my side, Tau'ri," Amonet said.

Sam raised her eyebrows. "Sorry."

"But you will provide redress," Amonet said, and her tone was... conciliatory. Sam felt a cold pressure down the back of her neck, and tried to play it off.

"I can't tell you anything."

"You are not here to tell me anything," Amonet said, and extended one hand over her.

-

Colonel O'Neill had once referred to a Goa'uld hand device as a "hand-laser", and Sam hadn't even bothered to correct him. At the moment, though, the comparison sprung up unbidden, because having one of those things used on you was just about as far from getting lasered as Sam thought it possible to be.

It also made no sense to her.

It was more like being dropped into a storm of fire and having hands come at you through it, grabbing your burning flesh and pulling you right out of it. Out of the storm, the flesh, whichever. Hurt like hell; the trick was that after a moment your brain stopped registering pain as the thing that took precedence over all the other sensory input, not that Sam was sure what she was seeing, smelling, hearing, feeling in this little shared hallucination really fit the definition of _sensory input_. Asynchronous sensory data?

She would have cheerfully murdered the snake Amonet and any ten of her favorite guards, just to have Janet there so she could run all of this by her. And get something for the pain.

The world washed in and was that same tent on Abydos – Sha're's tent, Sam guessed. Or her father's. She could hear someone humming behind a hanging partition, could even see the edge of their shadow on the ground, but she couldn't seem to stand up and move toward them, and Sha're was by her side anyway and Sha're was the person she needed to talk to.

"How is this possible?"

Sha're pushed a bowl into her hands.

It was a clay bowl, and Sam could feel its weight and roundness. When she took one hesitant drink – it did make the headache more bearable, if only for a moment – she could taste the earthiness of the well-drawn water.

"It is Goa'uld magic," Sha're said. "I can bring you here when she subjects you to the kara'kesh."

"It's not magic," Sam said, staring into the water. "It's... sufficiently advanced technology."

"Magic, for the lack of a better word," Sha're said.

That sounded reasonable enough. "It feels real," Sam said, and looked down at the bowl in her hands. "It _tastes_ real. I can't remember ever tasting anything in my dreams." She shook her head. "What am I doing here?"

"You were taken by Amonet's Jaffa on the planet," Sha're said. "Amonet struck you down. You cannot remember?"

Remember. She remembered the smell of fire in the air and the patchy scrubgrass. She remembered her voice straining to scream over claymore explosions and gunfire. She remembered a rising sense of urgency, and a rising dismay. "The last thing I remember, Daniel was running for a tent, but he took a zat blast and went down. Teal'c secured him and I went to see what he'd been running after. I went into the tent, and–"

She stopped, and swallowed back bile.

 _And you were there, and you, and you, and you..._

"Your friends, my husband... they were forced to retreat," Sha're said. "Amonet's forces broke over the land like an ocean tide. Your people were lucky to lead my father and some of my people away alive." She cleared her throat. "You were... perhaps foolhardy to come following after me as you did."

"Daniel saw you," Sam realized aloud. "I knew that whatever he was running after, it was important. I trusted his judgment." Sure, she'd thought it might've been a warhead that needed defusing or a commander calling in reinforcements, but she couldn't blame him for running after his wife. Sha're was the entire reason he'd joined the Stargate program, and while she hoped it wasn't his only tie to SG-1, it was the earliest and quite possibly the strongest. Beyond whatever bond he and the Colonel shared.

"I am sorry for my part in your capture," Sha're said.

"None of this is your fault," Sam said. _But while you're here, maybe you'll be able to help me._ "Listen, why is Amonet keeping me alive? What does she want from me?" It might give her an angle of attack, anyway; a bargaining chip.

Sha're looked aside, her voice darkening. "This amuses her."

The cold shudder pressed itself back against Sam's spine. "The two of us? Talking?"

"No," Sha're said. "To see you in pain."

Garden-variety Goa'uld sadism, then. Slow execution for kicks and giggles. Sam groaned, and a small " _God_ " escaped her throat. She brought her hands up to press her palms into her eyes, then realized that these probably weren't her palms, and definitely couldn't be her eyes, and she was probably still kneeling on the floor in front of Amonet, and she started sliding toward the room where her body really was – and then she felt the _pull_ again, a firm tug, situating her right back in the hallucination.

It was one damn persistent hallucination, she'd give it that.

"We know there's a mental component to Goa'uld technology," Sam said. "If it's a given that Goa'uld tech has to detect and interpret mental commands, if we assume it has some way to transmit them, if the host is alive and co-conscious during the Goa'uld's... control..."

She trailed off. The headache was spiking, and she was acutely aware of how her mouth – words? Brain's linguistic processing center? _Intention_ to speak? – had outstripped her sense of empathy. Sometimes she just shouldn't be allowed to think science.

But Sha're was smiling. A sad smile, true, but more fondness than pain. "You speak like Daniel does."

Sam reached out. "You'll see him again," she told her. "And not like this." She wished she could make the words sound less hollow. _There's a way out of every box, a solution to every puzzle._ She just couldn't see it.

"If it is so," Sha're murmured, and Sam could tell she didn't believe her.

And unfortunately, short of getting out and proving it, Sam didn't have a way to convince her.

She looked down at Sha're's hands for a while, then at her own, and exhaled. "I'm Sam," she offered. "We didn't really get to meet, when I came to Abydos." She shrugged uneasily. "I was kinda distracted. I'd never been through the Stargate before."

"Sha're," Sha're said. "Wife to Daniel, daughter to Kasuf."

"I work with Daniel," Sam said. "We're part of the same team. This is what we do – we fight the Goa'uld. And my commanding officer would have my hide if I didn't believe we could get out of here."

Sha're smiled. "I've heard tales of your exploits. You are hated by Apophis. He rages at your names."

Sam could feel a phantom blush rising to her cheeks, a welling pride filling her lungs. "I'll take that as a compliment."

Sha're gave her an odd look, but it was accompanied by a smile.

"Daniel is still looking for you," Sam said.

Sha're looked down at her hands, bridging her fingers, then lacing them together. "...let us not speak his name too often in this inauspicious place," she said, and laid her hands in her lap. She glanced to the side, to the shadow and its humming caster. "No matter how much I might dream of his presence."

Sam followed her gaze. The shadow shifted, and it seemed to shift in a familiar way – and, now that she was listening, the humming sounded like a familiar voice. Maybe not a familiar hum, but she'd never heard Daniel hum before.

Of course. If Sha're could summon up an entire hallucinatory world, why not summon up a few hallucinatory people to inhabit it?

 _Okay. That's creepy._

She shook it off. "Can I ask you a question?"

Sha're looked back at her, and nodded.

"If you can access my mind," Sam asked, "why can't I access Amonet's?"

Sha're's answer was hesitant. "You do not hold the jewel," she said. _One-directional transference,_ Sam thought. "I believe it would be impossible. You wish to wrest it from her?"

"I wish to get out of here," Sam said. "Like you do, I imagine."

"There is no escape from this place."

"Give me some time, and I'll prove that there is," Sam said.

"I mean that you are under her control," Sha're said, and leaned forward. "This will only end when she wills it to end. The only power I have here is illusion!"

"Right." Sam dug her fingers and thumb into her temples, trying to think. "That's everything you've been able to do, right? But what if we look at this from a different angle?"

Sha're looked confused.

"You can use the ribbon device to communicate with me," Sam explained. "You have to have some access to it, however small. What about when Amonet isn't using it? Could you activate it on your own?"

Sha're shook her head. "She would stop me. She would know." She tilted her head to the side. "You needn't treat me as though I haven't tried."

That put her in her place. Sam blinked, realizing how she would have reacted if anyone had done the same to her. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean–"

"Most, in your place, would not have hope," Sha're said, and it was difficult to tell whether it was an acceptance of the apology, further censure, or just an unrelated observation. "...most, in my place, would not have so carefully tried."

 _Apology accepted_ , Sam thought.

"I shouldn't have underestimated you," Sam said, and tried to soften it with an uneasy smile. "I guess I should have known anyone who could keep Daniel's attention..."

Sha're chuckled, softly. "And that also applies to you?"

"All of SG-1. We don't stop fighting," Sam said. "Not even when something like this happens. You understand?"

"Of course," Sha're said, with annoyance in her tone. "But this is the only way I have to fight."

Sam frowned. The headache was blossoming up, the world draining away. "Maybe not the only way," she said, and it was gone.

-

The world which replaced it was cold, dark, and seemed unreal until she tried to move.

The _headache_ which replaced it was spectacular.

It took almost three minutes, counting every breath, before she could sit up and push through enough to get any sense other than nociception working.

What she discovered as soon as she did was blood leaking from her nose and a wet pressure in her ears, which probably meant increased intracranial pressure, which had her pushing her back against the wall and choking down a whimper. The hand device would tear apart her mind. And break Sam Carter's body, flay her flesh, but leave her her _mind_.

 _Just concentrate. Breathe._

She pressed her palms into her eyes and forced herself to breathe deeply. Could just be that whatever-it-was tore apart the blood vessels in her sinuses. The energetic vortex would have been right over them. Could just be anything. Almost anything. She was no doctor – not the medical kind, anyway – but she knew one thing: prolonged exposure to Goa'uld torture was unlikely to have a good prognosis no matter what the exact effects were. Extrapolated to its logical conclusion? She stayed here, she'd die here. The fact that Sha're would be there with her was scant consolation.

 _Better than dying alone, I guess._

At least she was learning what to expect. Lightheadedness, nausea, headache – nothing she couldn't work through if she had to, and she had to. She willed her stomach to settle, closed her eyes, and began pushing herself across the cell until she reached the symbols her mind had marked out for her.

 _We'll just hope there's something useful here instead of just strange._

Glimpsing it from across the room, she'd taken it for a deeper shadow – something that might indicate that the symbols were detached from the wall, meant to be turned or depressed like knobs or buttons. Now, closer, it seemed that something was smeared on them – whoever had cleaned it off had wiped the surface of the symbols clean, but hadn't really worked down around the edges. She slid her fingernail against the stuff, and it flaked off and dusted her fingertip.

Blood. Not a lot of blood, but it covered too much space to be an accidental drip or smudge. But it wasn't a splatter pattern either – Sam could make out angles and splotches, if she tried to fill in the parts which had been cleaned away. Purposeful, then, probably drawn, but she couldn't resolve it into anything intelligible. There wasn't enough left.

She touched the symbols – each bloody hieroglyph, in turn – but nothing happened. No hidden sensors, no miraculous technology activating. She compared the bloodied symbols to the symbols by the door, and couldn't find a common pattern.

 _Don't give up. Think. Try anything._

Hieroglyphs were a system of writing, and she knew just enough to muddle through the sounds. Maybe with the scraps of Jolinar, she could work out the meanings, as well. It was something to try, at least.

She was still enmeshed in lines of propitiation and the fear-worship of the cults of Apophis when Amonet's guards came in and took her again.

-

"I have been thinking," Sha're said, "how you might survive."

Sam lifted the crook of her arm away from her eyes. The world was getting more precarious, and even here, the pain was spiking through. "Oh?"

Sha're nodded. "But I have not come to a conclusion," she said. "Amonet has no interest in you aside from your pain. I have no influence over her."

Well. It was the thought that counted.

Granted, almost anything else would have counted more. But for being trapped by a parasite inside her own brain, Sha're was still managing to do more than Sam ever had, trapped under Jolinar.

Sha're growled, and dug her thumbs into the woven rug. "I was imprisoned once, as you were," she said. "When I was with child, when Amonet went to sleep, before I was returned to Abydos, I was locked in a cell, as you are. Perhaps it was even the same cell."

Sam blinked. "They caged you?"

"Not at first.  Apophis found it undignified even for the host of his queen to be seen imprisoned.  But I was... perhaps an ungracious guest of his Jaffa."  A thin smile belied the words.

"No kidding," Sam said.  "What did you do?"

Sha're bent her head, glancing through her eyelashes.  "I blinded one of the Jaffa," she admitted, and raised a hand in a claw to illustrate.  "He is blind to this day."

Sam laughed.  "Daniel was right," she said.  "You are an incredible woman."

"Mm," Sha're said, but she sounded pleased. It didn't last long; frustration washed in over it. "But it avails me nothing. I know all that Amonet knows, yet I am as helpless as a silverbill in the talons of an eagle." She put her hand down, disgusted.

Sam pulled a face, trying to think of something reassuring to say. Problem was, having been where Sha're was for all of half a day, she was pretty sure there was nothing _to_ be said. And of course, it just figured that the sort of intelligence the SGC would literally have killed to obtain was completely useless in her current situation; what she needed wasn't fleet strengths and positions or overviews of the current Goa'uld political situation, it was a first-aid kit or a zat or a way out of her little closet of a cell.

 _–wait._

She sat up, and the headache spiked through the illusion. "There's a panel," she said. And sure, it would make sense to disable it, but the Goa'uld didn't seem keen on security technology. Maybe a lock code was all they put in place. "Can you tell me the symbols, in order, that Amonet's guards use to open my cell door?"

Sha're frowned. "You are thinking of walking out?"

"I was thinking of running, if I could stay upright long enough," Sam said.

"It will be difficult," Sha're said.

Sam let out a short and unamused laugh. "Yeah, well, you don't know the SGC," she said. "We tend to take 'difficult' as a personal challenge."

Sha're regarded her, eyes bright and sharp. "I know you," she said, after a moment. Her mouth drew into another smile, not quite so thin, this time. "And I know my Daniel. This is all I need to know." She bent over, smoothing away the dirt. "There are seven symbols. They are these."

Sam watched her draw, committing the symbols to memory. "Do you know where they keep the weapons on this ship? Zat'nik'tels, stun grenades?"

Sha're was already shaking her head. "Amonet does not know these things," she said. "She does not fight. But you should not need them, if you are swift."

She tilted her head, eyeing Sam.

"Listen. When you go free, do not try to save me. Bring your kinsmen back, bring my Daniel back, but you alone cannot help me." Sam started to respond, started to argue, but Sha're held her hand up. " _Listen,_ " she insisted. "I have learned to be patient. I was a woman before we were free of Ra. If I am old by the time I am free of Amonet, the freedom will be no less sweet."

Sam met her eyes. "We don't leave our people behind, Sha're."

Sha're shook her head. "I am not of your people. You do me no favors with your capture or death."

"Don't underestimate me."

" _You_ should not underestimate _me_." Sha're moved closer, putting them shoulder-to-shoulder, and smoothed away the dirt before them. "Draw the symbols so I know you remember."

Sam could feel the heat of Sha're's skin through her robes, against her shoulder. She could feel her breath, quickened in anticipation. It was hard to believe that of this all, only her intent and her intel were real. She traced the symbols in the dirt, and Sha're nodded her approval.

"There is but one guard outside your cell," Sha're said. "You are a woman; he will underestimate you. When you are out, turn to your left side; your right leads toward the halls of Amonet. There is a tel'tk on this ship." She made another symbol in the dirt, drew the squat profile of a Tel'tak beside it. "This is an old Ha'tak, and ponderous. The tel'tak may outrace it in hyperspace."

"Will it be guarded?" Sam asked.

She shook her head and kept drawing. "There are few Jaffa on the ship; most follow in their transport or have remained on the planet behind us. The symbols to open the tel'tak's door are these."

Sam looked at them, committing them to memory. "I understand."

Sha're gave a short laugh. "This is how the fight against Ra began," she said, and drew a pyramid in the dust. "I showed my Daniel how to return home."

Three moons over the pyramid, two pylons before it, and a long road leading out of it. Sha're reached out and covered Sam's hand with hers, smudging dust against her skin.

"Go back to Daniel for me. Tell him I love him," she said. "Tell him the child is on a planet called Kheb." She began drawing the address in the dirt. "Tell him to keep the child safe. Tell him the child will know all that Apophis knew. Tell him–"

The world flickered.

"I'll tell him," Sam said, and Sha're grabbed her hands, pressing her lips into the heel of each palm.

"Good luck, sister," she said. "Good luck. Good luck. Good–"

-

– _luck._

Sam could barely move when she came to. Her body seemed disconnected from her mind. The headache which held her was geologic in scope: vast mountains splintering up from deep tectonic aches, cracking and quaking the surface of her mind. She lay there, concentrating alternately on trying to move and trying to steal a moment away from the pain.

 _You know,_ her brain chimed in, unhelpfully, _this seems awfully real, too._

One of the nerve impulses finally got through to her legs, twitching them out of alignment, and she found herself rolling from her side onto her face with a quiet noise and a cacophony of hurts. She caught her breath, half-consciously, and thought _But if this was a hallucination, I really hope my brain would have shielded me from this._

For the moment, she decided to assume reality.

She got her eyes closed after a little experimentation, and focused on her breathing again. Slowly, slowly, in and out, letting her awareness retreat to the inside of her lungs and try to fix things from there. She wondered if she'd make it, after another session, after two more – how long before she was just trapped in her own body, her range of motion shrinking like a shrinking cell? How long before this tiny scraped-out bowl of awareness and control was the only thing left to her?

How long before she didn't even have that?

 _Shut up and focus._ She lengthened one breath, and tried to twitch her hand. It responded on the first try, this time. _Let's not find out. Focus on range of motion, then get up and balance, and then get out of here before the question comes up._

Inhale. Ache. Exhale.

Twitch.

She got her hand moving, then her knees, then her ankles, after her knees. Got her hands and knees arranged underneath her.

 _Steady. Breathe. Push._

She got herself into a kneel, then eased back into a crouch. _There, see? Progress._

Of a sort. At the rate, getting past the guard outside her cell would be a minor miracle; getting to the tel'tak might be the most she was capable of. Still, she had to search for something reassuring, no matter how embellished or false it objectively was. _I've been in worse situations than this. It can't be any worse than Basic. It can't be any worse than fighting against a snake jamming herself into your central nervous system._

That stung hard enough to get her hands to fist.

 _It can't be any worse than what Sha're is going through now._

She opened her eyes, taking deep gulps of air until her stomach felt settled and her balance was as good as it seemed to get. She was lightheaded, but she could work through that. And she could tell herself that the lightheadedness might have less to do with the ribbon device than the imprisonment. Hallucinated water aside, she hadn't eaten or drank anything in how long? A day? More?

 _This is insane. I can barely walk. I can barely stand._

 _Breathe._

She was having a hard time believing that she would make it. So that was it; a promising career, cut short in a cell flying somewhere light-years away from Earth because she'd tried to act the hero and hadn't thought things through.

 _Major! Shut up and concentrate!_

"Right," she muttered to nothing. Her inner voice was her own voice, not her father's or any of her instructors' or Colonel O'Neill's, though she occasionally wished it would be. She'd probably listen to either of them.

She stood, despite thinking it a really bad idea.

Then she stumbled, caught herself on the opposite wall, and only managed not to throw up because she hadn't eaten anything since the last time. She rested her forehead against the wall and sank back down again, staring at the bloodied symbols as they passed in front of her face.

She'd almost gathered her balance for a second attempt when the pattern sprang into focus, and it was like the casing of reality lifted up and let her see the mechanisms inside.

The blood was Abydos. Faded by washing and distorted by the angle of viewing, but it was the origin symbol for Abydos, with the line of the ground drawn below it, the ramp, the lines issuing down out from it.  _Going forth_ , she thought, and her mind filled in _Going forth by day_ , as the souls of the dead did, the human-headed birds flying out of their temples. Birds out of a cage. _Going free._

Her breath tangled in her throat. Sha're had been caged here, dreaming of freedom, and she'd marked her own defiance on the walls.

 _Like hell you're not of our people_ , Sam thought, and let herself slump forward.

The plan had been simple: open the door, take the guard by surprise, run left down the hall, find the tel'tak, take it and get into hyperspace before anyone could stop her. A gamble, difficult, but possible.

And also impossible. She could feel it right down to her bones – there was no way she'd be able to stand up, walk out that door, and leave Sha're behind her. Her blood would turn to tar and her legs would turn to salt before that happened. She could take the tel'tak and run back to the protection of Earth and the shadow of the Asgard treaty, but if she did, she was bringing Sha're out with her.

Or dying in the attempt.

Dying seemed more likely.

-

The answer, as it happened, was not to stand at all.

Sam edged her way to the panel, reached up, and keyed the escape sequence. The door slid open, and the guard in the hall turned to see what was going on. His gaze went right above her.

It was enough time to lunge, get his zat, and pull the trigger twice before it was fully out of its holster. She pulled it the rest of the way free, turned right, and took a sprinter's start into a stumbling run.

Then the explosion came.

The entire ship bucked, and she caught herself against the wall. An alarm cut through the air, followed by a Jaffa shout over the ship's intercom.

 _Great_ , Sam thought. She ran faster.

She knew the route from being dragged down the halls, and she could only hope Amonet was in her throne room. She hadn't seen command consoles in the room, which meant that maybe, _maybe_ most of the Jaffa would be on the pel'tak and thus far away. Still, running for the queen Goa'uld while the ship was under attack couldn't be a bright idea.

Not that running for the queen Goa'uld was a great idea even if she didn't have added incentive to be under guard.

Just because it was the only option Sam would allow herself to take didn't mean it was in any way a good one.

She was sprinting as she reached the throneroom door, lungs burning and vision tunneling, and counted two Jaffa in with Amonet. They were turning just as Sam skidded in.

 _Sha're first!_

She was the one with the shield. And Amonet was turning, reaching to activate it as Sam shot, fingers brushing the control before the searing light of the zat interrupted her, and she crumpled.

Her guards acted faster.

Sam ducked as the first shot screamed past her. She tried to dodge away, but her body wasn't acting quite like it should – she stumbled, catching blowback from the impact on the wall, sparks and shrapnel leaping through the air and peppering her back and side. She twisted toward the Jaffa who'd fired, pumping two zat blasts into him in sharp succession, and then the back of a staff weapon caught her and crumpled her left arm inward. She felt her ribcage shift under the impact, and she hit the ground. The zat skittered out of her hand.

The Jaffa above her was aiming, and she rolled to one side and managed half a breath before the staff blast rang out, and she felt the heat, and–

And the Jaffa who'd been standing above her hit the ground beside her, two smoking craters on his body where the blast had transited from his back through his chest. Dead.

She finished the breath in a gasp, right hand scrambling for the zat before her brain processed what her eyes were telling her. Reinforcements had arrived, running in through the doorway with their weapons raised, but they weren't Amonet's people.

They were SG-1.

A laugh broke out of her mouth before she could stop it, half excess adrenaline bleeding out, half surprise. Teal'c turned to guard the doorway – an instant _before_ the Colonel ordered him to – and the Colonel was approaching with his weapon still trained on the Jaffa, and Daniel had frozen at the point of decision between running to her and running to Sha're.

"Go!" she said, cutting right past the Colonel to address him. "I'll be fine." She pushed herself up with her right arm, cradling her left close to her chest, and exhaled. "I only hit her once."

"Sam–" he started.

"Daniel." The Colonel's voice brooked no argument. "Secure the Goa'uld. And _you_ just couldn't wait for rescue, could you, Major?" He crouched down beside her, and took one hand off his rifle.

She winced. "Wasn't sure you'd make it. Sir."

The Colonel shook his head. "You should know I never miss a party. How's your arm?"

She considered. It hurt like hell, but everything had been hurting like hell. "It won't kill me."

That seemed to be the sort of answer he was looking for, because he gave a short nod. "Last question. What are our odds of being neck-deep in Jaffa in the next three minutes?"

She snorted, then lost why she'd found that funny. "Sha're said that most of the ship's complement was on the troop ship trailing this ha'tak."

"Well, we won't need to worry about that," the Colonel said, with a smug note to his voice. Daniel, who'd just extracted Amonet's hand from her ribbon device, looked immediately over.

"Wait. Sha're said?"

"Long story," Sam said, and bit back a hiss when the Colonel took her good arm and hauled her up. She accepted his help to steady herself and met Daniel's eyes, promising an explanation before she looked down to the woman beside him. It was hard, trying to winnow out the details that were Amonet and the details which remained Sha're.

She had a feeling it'd get easier.

The Colonel kept a hand on her arm, giving her a critical look. "You okay to walk out of here?"

"I'll be all right," she said, and took a deep breath and looked to Daniel. "...let's get her home."

The Colonel watched as Daniel gathered Sha're up, and turned to give Sam a critical eye again. He seemed satisfied with whatever he saw. And Sam, bruised, aching and exhausted, couldn't fault him – she was feeling pretty satisfied, herself.

"All right, kids," the Colonel said, motioning grandly to the hall. "Teal'c, you're on point. Move along home."

\- END -


End file.
